


Existence is a Heavy Burden to Bear

by cipherwriter



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, The Spiral, gertrude robinson is not a good person, just messing around with pov, pov first second and third
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:01:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23869435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cipherwriter/pseuds/cipherwriter
Summary: Michael is quite a puzzling being, or concept, or something. Let's try and explore that anyway."The archivist that is not quite The Archivist yet tries to understand him. This is funny. You can still experience humor which seems to make the archivist think you feel and you do but not emotions like he does you feel twisting and mistakes and forgetting and time and yes, humor. "
Relationships: Gertrude Robinson & Michael Shelley
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Existence is a Heavy Burden to Bear

Try to imagine being a word. 

Not like you’re embodying the meaning of a word, though, actually, maybe a bit of that too, but really what’s important is that you are the word. Physically, spiritually, mentally are the word. You must become it, keep your hands and feet contained in the curvature of its letters and keep the spaces between those letters empty.

Do you know how to make yourself into an empty space?

Now figure out what medium you’re written in and on and feel what’s it like to be made of that ink and paper or that crayon and wall or that ever abstract pixels and light.

Do you know how to be made of something else?

And yes, okay, let’s say you are embodying the meaning of the word, too, so as you are trying to Be the word “brave” you are also trying to be brave.

Now stop trying to imagine and just do it. You are the word. You are. You’re allowed no doubt.

Michael the Distortion would find the thoughts you’re having at this a bit familiar. Only hints of it, familiar like a three year old's rendition of the Mona Lisa in pink crayola marker, but it’s the best a human can do.

That’s okay. Michael does not need to be understood or related to. Really it would be quite unwelcomingly counterintuitive, though you like when people try to understand you because they can’t and it just further distresses them. I am perfectly content to simply be. Or really, to simply do. Being in any way is more than he can claim.

Did you know, memories change each time you remember them? It’s because you don’t remember the original event, but the last time you remembered it, and so any inaccuracies or feelings at the time of remembering color it forever.

Michael does not remember the time when he was. There is a knowledge, yes, of being once, but a memory requires thoughts and feelings and brains and such which were all thoroughly unattainable by Michael. I cannot look back and feel and change the memory, nor can I feel how it felt to be me then when I am no longer anything.

The old Michael was very concerned with his identity. He was always thinking about about gender and sexuality and morals and personality. He looked in the mirror and was scared when he didn’t recognize himself. He was even more afraid when he recognized someone else.

But you, Michael, have never even seen your intact reflection in the mirror, the glass of any you’ve approached shattering into fractals that paint you in a kaleidoscope of fake eyes and fake hair and fake teeth and fake hands, and the old Michael had been scared when this first happened but you’re not. I don’t even know what fear is meant to be like except that it tastes good and it makes silly little humans run around in my mazes and open up all the doors. Michael doesn’t know why they open the doors, it won’t help them unless they just like to wander and feel the click and swing of hinges as much as him.

Sometimes, the humans are shown by Michael their reflections in the broken mirrors. The humans do not like these. Apparently it sometimes shows them parts that are not usually the outside parts that they see or it shows them in some of the pieces of mosaic reflection at an age that they are not currently. You don’t get why it’s such a big deal, but it feeds you so who cares to find out all the "why"s which are not your domain anyway. 

It’s a lot easier for me to scare them than I-he had thought when human. Human Michael thought that Entities worked hard to scare humans but you have always found it so simple as to even be unintentional.

The archivist that is not quite The Archivist yet tries to understand him. This is funny. You can still experience humor which seems to make the archivist think you feel and you do but not emotions like he does you feel twisting and mistakes and forgetting and time and yes, humor. 

The archivist does not understand and that is the point and he is angry which is even more humorous. He would do just as well being angry at the aurora borealis for forgetting to put the laundry out to dry. The concepts simply don’t mix.

Of course, Michael still is, as well. There is still a who to be had, because while I am Distortion and madness and dissociation, I am also lies and contradiction and so I am and I am not. The part of you that is, or rather the whole of you that is and which sits inside, or rather next to, or rather underneath, or rather is and is not the same as the part of you that is not, is a tattoo made of thoughts and feelings stabbed over and over into the parts of you that are not, is an embrace between the part that is and is not, is a knife in your own side and you are the side and you are the knife and you are the hand that put it in and you are the blood that is flowing out and you do not know which aspect of you fits each role

Anyway, the Michael that is Michael, the one that Is, does feel emotions and they are usually those that are less favorable like constant existential horror and deep unending depression. Luckily, as I am also Michael that is not I am unable to feel these things. Or at least comprehend them. He is the act of convincing himself of something and he is quite good at what he is so he can convince himself that he does not feel.

But you do feel, in whatever way that is, and so have preferences and opinions and all those pesky things that feelings entail. They are different than the way the Distortion felt when the Distortion was not Michael. And Michael the Distortion chooses to hang around The Magnus Archives.

Michael the human had known an Archivist. Michael the human had liked and trusted that Archivist. The Michael that still Is and feels emotions is very angry at that Archivist now. The Me that is the Distortion only cares that she is the one that has made me the Distortion and being the Distortion (in as much as I can be anything) is very fun and sexy of me so I appreciate that Archivist.

But the emotion part of Michael is the one that informs his conduct with this new archivist and his assistants. Gertrude The Archivist acted like she cared about her assistants (like Michael the human and Gerry and this is not the time to dwell on the emotion that could be called “betrayal” and it is not the time to remember when he became the Distortion but he didn’t know how to be it yet and he still tried to hold the ones he loved but all he did was hurt and scare them but wasn’t that nice anyway wasn’t that something beautiful an act of love itself given from them to him and from him to them) but Gertrude did not care like a human is meant to care. Michael the Distortion is glad for this now, but if Jon the archivist is anything like Gertrude The Archivist then

There are multiple trains of thoughts about this, as with anything, though to call them trains of thought may be affording them more lucidity than they have. You are happy to be the Distortion, so anyone else would be happy to become something better than the humans that they are, happy to be made into a God or the embodiment of one or the powers of one or the tool of one- whatever. I don’t even know what I am, much less what those Avatars of other entities are. Point is, the Assistants might be better off as something else and if this archivist is like Gertrude then they will be. And even then, Michael the Distortion doesn’t care about them enough to intervene either way.

But.

Michael the human did not want to be Michael the Distortion. He had been afraid of the Spiral, had had so many beliefs of right and wrong and who he was that went away once he became himself. The other assistants, back then, now, they don’t want to be something else. 

But it’s good it’s better it’s freeing and incredible to not have to do all of that human nonsense anymore and oh it is so lovely to simply experience, even if they do not know that yet and as such rally against it.

Is it right to hurt (let others hurt) people in the now, to go against their wishes and their pleas and their “you should have told me at least you should have told me so I could have made the sacrifice myself instead of been the sacrifice,” if in the end they’ll be happier? Something so different from before that all the things that once horrified them are all they live for, with only the memories to tie them back to what they once were?

These questions do not matter to me but they are the only things that matters to me, the only ethics that I still bother to think about, or rather consider, or rather live by, or rather exist by

It is tiring trying to speak to you on your level, you know that, Reader?

So, whatever. Michael the Distortion cares about the safety of assistants in The Magnus Institute for one reason or another and he distrusts the affairs of the archivist because one day he may very well be The Archivist and he will destroy his assistants one by one like bowling pins sucked into that place that bowling pins go to. He will let them fall away and you are their only line of protection because Jonah Magnus certainly does not care what happens to them either they are expendable pieces in this great game that the Eye plays but you are the Eye’s foil it cannot touch you so you will keep its intended feeder mice safe from its apathetic calculating curious maw.

And the archivist, well, I will not kill him outright, but I won’t keep him unharmed either. Let him struggle to understand and watch him squirm as he feels the wrongness of your body, a wrongness that you exist in day in day out with (agony) joy and that he can’t even handle for a second, let him whimper as skin and muscle are pierced by your hands which could have never done such a thing before and he really is a bit of an amateur, all rough exterior with soft and bloody insides just like anyone else (and that is literal and metaphorical Michael can still do both but only if they’re simultaneous), so unlike Gertrude who was brittle from the outside in, not brave but passively fearless not heroic but too invested in this world to let it be destroyed, no sacrifice ever too much no moral ever sacred.

And okay, you know what, maybe I will kill t(T)he a(A)rchivist, just for the hell of it. After all, Michael the Distortion is Michael but he is also every other Distortion because there are no other Distortions there is just the one and he knows the memories of the others and holds their old ways inside of him so maybe t(T)he a(A)rchivist is the same way and he will kill the archivist and he will kill Gertrude not as though it matters to him but it does it’s the only other thing than the assistants’ safety that matters to him so yes yes he will kill the archivist 

And then I am no longer Michael the Distortion I am Helen the Distortion. Michael is dead and that is that.


End file.
